When the country’s curling elite gathers in Estevan, Sask., Wednesday for the Canada Cup, it will provide fans with an opportunity to see some new rules designed to put rocks in play and points on the scoreboard.

This will be the first Curling Canada event that uses the five-rock free guard zone and it will feature a different timing system than is normally used in national and international events.

In this tournament, teams will get four minutes per end to throw their eight rocks, rather than 38 minutes for the entire game.

While both those rules have been used on the World Curling Tour, in which games are only eight ends, this will be the first time they are used in 10-end games.

“I think you’re gonna get some pretty funky scores out there,” said Matt Dunstone, whose Regina team will play in the Canada Cup for the first time.

“Just playing the five-rock rule with eight ends, you get some pretty wild scores but now add two more ends to that. We could get some football-like scores out there.”

Dunstone, who curls with Braeden Moskowy, Catlin Schneider and Dustin Kidby, believes the Canada Cup rules will be challenging for the players, but rewarding for the fans.

“It’s gonna be pretty fast-paced too because of the timing” he said. “It will be interesting to see if you get any errors down at skips rocks if teams are short on those four minutes. You might see some big errors and some big ends come about.

“For the viewer I think this is a great rule to have. Fans love seeing buzzer beaters and things like that so this rule is definitely for the fans.”

Reid Carruthers and Jennifer Jones, both of Winnipeg, are technically the defending champions at this event. They won it in 2016 and it was not played in 2017 due to the Olympic curling trials.

There are seven men’s teams in the field this year, including Olympians Brad Jacobs, Brad Gushue and Kevin Koe, along with Carruthers, Dunstone, Brendan Bottcher, and John Epping and eight women’s teams, including Olympians Jones and Rachel Homan, Chelsea Carey, Casey Scheidegger, Kerri Einarson, Darcy Robertson, Allison Flaxey and Laura Walker.

“It’s different, it’s fun, it’s unique and the with the strength of the field it’s definitely not going to be easy for anyone out there,” Carruthers said.

“I’ve been loving playing five-rock regularly on the tour so it will be neat for the fans to see what this is like. There’s a lot of fans who tune into TSN to watch the Season of Champions run so it might be the first time for a few people to see five-rock.”

The Canada Cup comes with a $70,000 purse in each of the men’s and women’s divisions and in some years the winners gets a direct entry into the Olympic trials.

With the 2021 trials still so far away, the winners of this event will get a berth in a 2019-20 World Cup event and be guaranteed berths in the 2021 pre-trials tournament, something most of these teams will be hoping to forgo.

“I think a lot of the teams that play in the Canada Cup eye up getting a direct entry into the trials rather than going through the pre-trials,” Carruthers said. “Our focus for the event is to go and try to win the Canada Cup. It’s a confidence booster for when you are playing for one of those direct entry spots down the road.”

For the Dunstone team, a newly formed squad that is just starting to make its mark on the World Curling Tour, this is the highlight of their young season.

They only recently found out they’d be in the field in Estevan, earning the spot on the basis of their Canadian Team Ranking System status.

“This was one of our goals that we set out at the beginning of the year so it’s pretty satisfying to have snagged that last spot,” he said. “We’re pretty excited for this.

“We played quite a bit early on and have been playing quite a bit this year because we didn’t want to leave anything on the table in terms of getting this spot, especially being kind of the hometown team in Estevan.

“It just kind of solidifies us as one of the top teams in Canada. Hopefully we can make a statement at this Canada Cup and just let everybody know we’re here to stay and we’re for real. We’ve had a pretty good season so far and going into this Canada Cup and really showing off what we’re able to do, would really solidify ourselves as one of the top teams in Canada.”